Sui, a blockchain developed by former Facebook engineers and launched last year, has been gaining traction in the decentralized finance space. One of the platform's emerging projects is now preparing to launch its token.

DeepBook, a project built on Sui that has created DeFi’s answer to a central limit order book, announced Wednesday it will launch its long-awaited DEEP token on October 14.

A central limit order book is what exchanges use to facilitate buying and selling between traders by recording bids and offers. 

DEEP token holders will be able to vote on changes to the DeepBook network and earn rewards for staking the asset. The token’s maximum supply is 10 billion tokens; 2.5 billion tokens are part of the initial circulating supply, with the rest to be released over the next seven years.

Early users were given a stake of nearly 20,000 DEEP back in March when DeepBook gave away more than 100,000 "DBClaim" NFTs that could be redeemed for the token once finally launched.

But another day, another token launch—why’s it important in this case?

Token holders will be able to get discounts on their trades, and with more traders holding the tokens and getting discounts, more liquidity will come to the Sui ecosystem, its founders claim. 

DeFi is the catch-all term for projects that want to replace what traditional financial institutions like banks do. Such protocols allow anyone to lend or earn interest on their crypto, but can be risky—and users can rack up huge losses if they’re not careful.

Most DeFi projects run on the Ethereum or Solana networks, but Sui is now making inroads into the space, with DeepBook’s token launch potentially marking another step forward for the Sui ecosystem.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair